NSA whistle blowers warn that the US government can use surveillance to 'see into your life'

Consider this: every piece of data that is gathered will be misused by someone, somewhere, at some time. Do you want data related to you to be
gathered if the above statement is even remotely true?

Consider also this: in the recent LinkedIn security breach, basically what was stolen was the email addresses and passwords for LinkedIn members.
Seems harmless if you just change your password, right? Well...except all banks basically use email addresses as log ins, and that every usually uses
the same password for everything. Now you are seeing the problem.

So, what has happened is that the data was gathered by LinkedIn, then breached. No word on it being misused that I know of....

But the point is, at some point this data will become available to someone that you will not want it made available to. this is the problem with
collecting behavioral data on people. We don't like it when private industry does it (hello Google and Facebook). Why would we want the government
to do it?

It's not so much that the government has -ongoing- surveillance on every individual. That's simply impractical in the extremes. Any such system,
particularly one engineered by our bureaucracy, would become clogged with useless information.

Key types of activity are monitored.

For example - we run all TCNs through biometric databases, adding them if necessary, when they enroll to work on a compound. Their data is compared
against that of known persons of interest and flagged if necessary.

We don't have black helicopters following each of them around or have teams prying into their facebook pages. It's too much data to sift through
for no real gain.

But if a known AQ operative (or a member of some other extremist organization) tried to land a contractor job, he'd get flagged on enrollment (and
he'd get taken to the ground if he tried to get in without going through that enrollment process).

That said - if someone tips off the teams that do investigations; those teams will follow those tips and start digging into a person's "E-profiles"
(as well as other accessible information) to see if there's cause for concern.

These tips come from people - forum members/browsers, friends or acquaintances on facebook who get concerned about an individual's behavior... the
list of potential informants is long.

That's not to say you need a society full of narcs... but if someone's making the hair on the back of your neck stand up - there's a reason for it.
Chances are, your neighbor isn't inserting human IL4 genes into smallpox acquired from former soviet stockpiles.... but if something seems way off -
I should hope you bring it to someone else's attention.

Or snoop around and get yourself injured/killed - bring the spot-light down.... something.

100% mortality rates among those not vaccinated... 60% among those vaccinated.

And you can do it with stuff common in a highschool biology lab. How wonderful.

Such a strain would be hotter than Ebola - hotter than hell.... airborne transmission, contagion before visible symptoms, deliberate triggering of
cytokine storms (jamming your immune system)... You want to see the human population virtually eliminated in a year - release something like that.

So... on one hand, we have to address two naive concepts.

It is incredibly naive to think that the actions of individuals or small groups will be of minimal consequence to the larger whole of society. We are
lucky renegades are so fixated on explosives. Biological agents offer far, far more destructive potential.

On the other hand - it's incredibly naive to think that government surveillance of everything is going to fix the problems. Countries like Dubai
have low crime rates because the surveillance is so heavy that crime literally doesn't pay - you almost always get caught. ... But that doesn't do
much to prevent a crime - particularly someone bent on destruction - from occurring. It's easy to find clues in records and data when you have
'anchors' to your search. When you're trying to analyze data in real time and locate signs of nefarious activity, you're chasing ghosts and
phantasms in a noisy storm of information.

So, the practical thing is to accept a bit of a compromise. I don't need to be making nuclear or biological weapons in my back yard - regardless of
whether or not I plan to use them to hurt someone. It's impractical and entirely too empowering to give the government real-time surveillance over
everything I do. So I accept that government agencies would be looking for purchasing trends that indicate I'm buying components for bombs or to
start a crude level 4 hot lab in my garage... and be around to see what the deal is.

Will it flag situations that are innocuous from time to time? Of course. That's why you have people come in and apply common sense. Will some
plans succeed in spoofing the detection system? Of course. No defense is entirely perfect. You simply have to match the defense effort to the
threat and combine strategies that are both efficient and effective.

Originally posted by GENERAL EYES
I'm fully aware that such technology exists and understand it's implementation in the modern day and age, thank you for the confirmation video.

While our forefathers lived in a completely different day and age when the original amendment was instituted, we can't deny that America has grown
exponentially over the years population wise, and that there are more acts of unnecessary violence than ever before due to these factors that our
forefathers may not have been able to foresee.

If such technology can prevent the loss of life of innocent civilians or thwart large scale threats, I understand why it's come down to this
decision.

I grew up in an environment where I was fully aware of being monitored due to the sensitive nature of my fathers job, and the fact that this is not
being manned by possible "over-reactionary" humans gives me comfort.

I know for a fact the NSA and it's computers are not interested in the minutia of our day to day lives, the things we might be embarrassed if the
world found out, but rather focuses on legitimate threats....and I can say without a doubt that such information will not be used in an unprofessional
manner.

I think someone has been watching way too many Disney cartoons...

Uncle Sam isn't a bad guy. He loves us and wants us to be safe...

In other news:
The Corporations aren't ripping us off....they are giving us great deals at their own expense because they like us.

You are not only trading your liberty for false security, but you are trading mine and everyone else's all for nil.

Expect stuff like this to become more common - and to be pursued even more aggressively than government monitoring.

Agree to monitoring of your shopping habits and have reduced health insurance premiums.

Allow a program on your computer to track your online searches and visited websites to refine search results and present you with targeted
advertisement deals.

Is it a bad thing, necessarily? I have no interest in seeing advertisements for manhood enlargement or the new car that starts at my average yearly
income. Not ever going to buy those. But I do get interested when ebooks are on sale, computer programs, laboratory equipment, electronic supplies,
and other such things are on sale. If I'm going to have someone watching me - may as well get advertisements that would actually interest me and
possibly allow me to save money on purchases I was already likely to make somewhere, anyway.

Of course, there's always the potential for data misuse.... and I've yet to encounter a "toolbar" type plugin that doesn't annoy me and piss me
right the # off. Most search providers are pretty good at throwing you targeted advertising without having to install obnoxious software on your
computer.

A form of "radio resonance imaging" can, over time, "see through walls" using satellite technology using several different segments of the
electromagnetic spectrum.

It takes a long time to put together the data to do it - and it's really only useful if you want to try and map what might be in a suspicious
industrial structure (depending upon what technology, exactly, you are using) - but it exists.

It's actually far more modest than many people seem to think.

Laser beams can be reflected off of windows and the frequency modulation and/or deflection can be used to generate an audio feed. Theoretically - any
surface that would act as a conduit for sound is potentially useful in this regard.

As for manipulating brain waves... that one I'm not so sure about. There has been considerable research into how weak electromagnetic fields can be
used to induce mood changes or trigger sensory perceptions - but none of it has been very promising in terms of mind control schemes - though you
could potentially apply it as a subtle influence - it's not going to be much more than inducing heightened paranoia or reducing it.

The brain, thankfully, is a very complex architecture that is not so easily guiled by magnetic fields.

Who cares? I don't. I am not a spy, and if they want to waste their valuable time watching me get up, iron clothes, go to work come home, go play
darts, come home, do some work on my computer, have sex with my wife and go back to bed.. go right ahead. Not that I think they do.

Do you have any idea how much work, how much time and how much manpower it would take to spy even on a tiny portion of the population? Yea.. not too
worried about it.

This content community relies on user-generated content from our member contributors. The opinions of our members are not those of site ownership who maintains strict editorial agnosticism and simply provides a collaborative venue for free expression.